ReVanced DMCA Takedown on GitHub | Hacker News Reader

ReVanced DMCA Takedown on GitHub

github.com

108 pointsBilal_io79 comments

This is typical behaviour for companies like these.

The app here is just another weather app taking data from the european weather models and national weather services. This data was created by taxpayer money and is most of the time available for free via APIs from national weather services (although "API" often means "a daily file dump on an FTP").

Then these companies take this free data, build an app around it and monetize it.

https://www.dwd.de/DE/presse/pressemitteilungen/DE/2020/2020...

In this recent court case in nearby Germany, ad-supported weather apps sued the German national weather service to take down the official free weather app. The national weather service was forced to make their app paid due to this ruling.

The APIs and data dumps for corporate customers have to remain available, though.

Nowadays I refuse to use any private weather apps. Private weather apps take public data, fill it with ads, and then sell it back to us. I say: Fuck them.

uuh, wat ? Revanced is an alternative youtube player ? You are in the wrong thread ?

Revanced YouTube itself, yes. But the revanced project also removes ads and adds features to many other apps, including some weather apps. And one of those got Revanced taken down.

ReVanced is more like a patch manager. The patches come from a separate repo which contains patches for more than YouTube. You'd find Twitter, TikTok, Twitch and much more. The issue is that someone accepted a PR for a patch a "premium" weather app. The DMCA takedown request came from the weather app's owners.

More context: It's a successor to Vanced, a patched Android YouTube client that, among other things, disabled ads. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube_Vanced?wprov=sfla1 ReVanced apparently had patches for more apps, which seems to have contributed to the takedown.

Why are these mod projects bothering to distribute on GitHub but then try to obfuscate what they do into Discords and online subculture hangouts?

Popularity I assume - people will be less hesitant to download an apk file from github, even if being on github doesn't really make it trustable in practical terms.

Presumably there are a lot of these dark projects which aren't anywhere public. We just don't hear about them

If you spend enough time in /g/ you will hear of everything.

What's /g/ anyway?

4chan's technology board.

hello /g/entleman

Why is everyone so angry on there?

Well yes, they're called "private". Often either illegal, it offends some powerful people or the creator doesn't give a shit and may just post a link on a forum as a thanks.

Respect to those who put it out in the open! A DMCA is nothing, but people have died and even went to prison for a cool gray area program.

One of the reasons why the original vanced was taken down was because it was advertised way too frequently and publicly. These projects should always be disseminated by word of mouth (hn/reddit does not count)

They can use European hosts like Codeberg, yet they still use GitHub.

They really shouldn't though, it would be kind of mean to Codeberg to host potentially illegal software there.

It's really not that complicated to get a domain and host your own instance of Gitea, and it would make it a lot more resilient to takedowns, if you have the right domain registrar and instance host.

Git hosting would be a great Tor hidden service. I wonder if git can push to onion addresses...

Absolutely, you can use Tor over a local Socks5 proxy that the daemon exposes, so you can do pushes over SSH as normal. Works perfectly fine.

That's awesome. Would be cool if there was a hidden git service with monero payments for storage. I don't really know anything about the opsec necessary for such a thing.

I feel like using git for a sensitive code distribution is a poor idea. Git exposes rather a lot of information about you, from basic ones like username to a history of commits (what if you accidentally committed something revealing PII?) It's much better to simply distribute code as a tar.gz archive or something.

I mean, if you're going so far as to set up git as a tor service, it probably isn't that much more work to obfuscate or just delete user info from commits.

But I'm not sure a vcs is what you'd want anyway. It might make more sense to just host a zip of the most recent branch state instead of exposing the history

Is it illegal though? I think there are different rules out there, maybe modifying closed source apps is legal.

A european host would take it down too. Europe has copyright laws too. And they have their own versions of DMCA.

Maybe a https://njal.la/ vps would help?

Mirror here: https://web.archive.org/web/20221209134101im_/https://tmp.on...

Download this Git bundle file and clone from it directly:

    wget https://web.archive.org/web/20221209134101im_/https://tmp.onion.moe/revanced-patches-v2.141.1.bundle
    git clone revanced-patches-v2.141.1.bundle revanced-patches

It has the full commit history up until a few hours prior to the repository being taken down.

The DMCA notice: https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2022/12/2022-12-0...

And the complaint itself:

> On GitHub at https://github.com/revanced/revanced-patches there is a patch that unlocks the subscription without payment for "Pflotsh ECMWF" and various other products.

If that’s true, this can’t really be very controversial?

Correct me if I am wrong: the DMCA takedown process was not designed for circumvention devices - this is what courts are for.

This company is not the copyright holder to these patches - they did not write them nor are they derivative works, so they need to use other legal means to approach this situation.

This is not first time this has happened with GitHub.

I think we may have a winner. Hopefully GitHub will learn eventually.

> nor are they derivative works

That isn't so obvious to me. For all intents and purposes this is no different from crack. I am not sure if DMCA is right tool but I totally understand why Microsoft wouldn't want to host it.

> For all intents and purposes this is no different from crack.

Yes, and you cannot take down crack using DMCA either!

Edit: If the crack is a keygen or patcher, of course. Patched orginal binaries can be taken down.

> Patched orginal binaries can be taken down.

That's what Vanced was, isn't it the same case with ReVanced?

No, Revanced only has the patches themselves in the repo, there's zero source code or binary or anything copyright related belonging to Google here, the DMCA is invalid.

My understanding was that `revanced-patches` contained just that: patches. The patches themselves are applied to the target apps on the end user device, so revanced doesn't need to host prepatched binaries that they don't own the copyright to.

Other moral or legal issues aside, this is a pretty clear abuse of the DMCA as far as I understand it.

If I'm reading this[0] correct, according to GitHub it includes that too.

[0] https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/content-removal-polic...

The weather data that the circumvention provides access to is not copy righted though right? From other comments I gather it comes from public data and is not the companies.

If so it would not meet the criteria in the first sentence of your link:

> The Copyright Act also prohibits the circumvention of technological measures that effectively control access to works protected by copyright.

That is an interesting corner case, not sure if it is a bug or a feature.

FWIW commit 44bc7074ea8aaa6f774ad23dd0667477cbe1caf1 (GH search) removes the mentioned parts if anyone wants a "clean" version.

Apart from the taken down revanced-patches repo, other repos in the revanced gh org are still up.

> Please describe the nature of your copyright ownership or authorization to act on the owner's behalf.

> We (Garzotto GmbH together with Kachelmann GmbH) are the owner of the product "Pflotsh ECMWF", a weather app for which a subscription can be purchased on Google Play. I am [private], [private] of Garzotto GmbH and submit this request on behalf of Garzotto GmbH

> Please provide a detailed description of the original copyrighted work that has allegedly been infringed. If possible, include a URL to where it is posted online.

> On GitHub at https://github.com/revanced/revanced-patches there is a patch that unlocks the subscription without payment for "Pflotsh ECMWF" and various other products.

> What files should be taken down? Please provide URLs for each file, or if the entire repository, the repository’s URL.

> https://github.com/revanced/revanced-patches

> The entire repository must be taken down. Even if our copyright considers part of it ( https://github.com/revanced/revanced-patches/tree/main/src/m... ) the complete repository at https://github.com/revanced/revanced-patches is clearly illegal, which you see immediately if you just spend a few seconds to check it out.

So let's get this right, a Swiss company abusing the fact that Github is US hosted is using a Copyright claim mechanism for US based copyright holders (DMCA) to claim that the entire app is 'illegal™' because someone found a way to get their weather forecasts without a paying subscription.

"Anti-circumvention Technology" DMCA claims are absolute horseshit. If you follow this ad ridiculum then curl and ffmpeg should also be 'illegal™' technology.

Well, we Europeans are constantly abused under this DMCA cancer so I don't see anything wrong with using it for gain?

(It's not like USians are showing any will to get rid of DMCA).

How is it "for gain"?

There are two different DMCA claims. The other one comes from a solo dev it seems - https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/a16b28b081e2302d4212caa7....

> So let's get this right, a Swiss company abusing the fact that Github is US hosted is using a Copyright claim mechanism for US based copyright holders (DMCA) to claim that the entire app is 'illegal™' because someone found a way to get their weather forecasts without a paying subscription.

An european copyright claim would result in the same thing. Just because GitHub want DCMA takedowns doesn't remove the fact that this would be taken down no matter what.

It's not that someone found a way, it's that they're sharing that. Pirating software from small companies and single developers is a massive low.

I have no access to what the patch content is (As it has been taken down).

But if indeed it is a key/crack to access the companies' weather forecasts it is still a massive hyperbole and overreach to claim that the whole app is _illegal_ as it is claimed.

Just remove the patch and bring the repo back up.

They aren't claiming the whole app is illegal. Two people have claimed that repo contains cracks. The entire repo that has been taken is basically just for patches for apps to get around premium controls. The ReVanced app repo is not affected nor is the org account. Just one repo that seems to have the sole purpose of providing cracks.

The patch just removes the instruction that does the license check and sets the return value to true.

This is the actual part that patches out the license check:

        val index = method.implementation.instructions.size

        // remove R() at 10212
        method.removeInstruction(index - 3)
        // remove R() at 10206
        method.removeInstruction(index - 5)

        method.addInstructions(
            index - 3, 
            "const/4 p1, 0x1"
        )

Patiently waiting for all repos to be moved to gitlab (or a self hosted instance of gitlab)

They can (and will) serve a DMCA request to the hosting provider (or the ISP).

Radicle, then? Or more simply self-hosted gitea on an ENS domain?

DMCA only works in the United States.

Does it? It's obviously US legislation, but I'd wager there are trade agreements between EU (or others) and US that require the EU to honor this legislation.

Not the DMCA but local copyright laws.

But since this is not an actual copyright issue, you just need someone to tell google that the revanced code is not copyrighted by google.

(unless there was any copyrighted material in the repo, then it's a different story)

The Darknet Diaries episode on the Pirate Bay [1] touched on the long tentacles of US copyright law

[1] https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/92/

Pick a European hosting provider that knows what they're doing and they're more than likely to ignore DMCA claims as they aren't legally binding in the EU

Europe can be even worse - in Germany, we still have the legal concept of Störerhaftung around that can expose hosters to significant legal liability.

I'm not necessarily rooting for the ReVanced project here, but… this takedown notice is supposedly claiming circumvention of access controls to copyrighted content? Since when is weather data copyrightable? Unlike what happens in Europe, the US doesn't recognise separate "database rights" either.

> the complete repository at https://github.com/revanced/revanced-patches is clearly illegal, which you see immediately if you just spend a few seconds to check it out.

I mean, this was clearly not written by a lawyer.

You cant copyright raw data. You could claim your particular data is a compilation tho https://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/database.html

Either US law applies, then the DCMA is valid, but compilations can not be copyrighted.

Or Swiss law applies, then compilations can be copyrighted, but DMCA does not apply.

DMCA is an illness. Intellectual property is a disaster.

This takedown has nothing to do with YouTube.

The repo was distributing patches for non-YouTube apps as well; specifically AnyTracker[0] and Pflotsch ECMWF[1]. Both of these patches appear to have been disablers for the Google Play License checks to permit usage of their respective "premium" version and both developers filed takedowns.

Suprisingly not Google (the original Vanced) or the MPAA (youtube-dl) this time.

[0]: https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2022/12/2022-12-0...

[1]: https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2022/12/2022-12-0...

No wonder ReVanced got taken down on GitHub, the chances are that someone from YouTube issued a DMCA takedown, or it could just be any youtuber knowing that their content on YouTube was going without ads on android.

GitHub has to take action, and here we are with ReVanced being taken down. I don't take this as a surprise, GitHub will take action if people write to them or send them a DMCA takedown.

If you are doing something that might be DMCA issue, why not host the repo in China on a service like https://gitee.com/ ?

The repository is back. The offending patches (for the apps AnyTracker and Pflotsh ECMWF) have been removed.

Seems like the takedown was reversed, and the offending patches appear to be gone.

And nothing of value was lost. If you want ad-free services, you can absolutely afford to chip in some money to the service provider, which keeps things above-board and legit. Don't be a darn cheapskate.

A bit too judgemental.

Please point us towards an ad-free paying service that doesn't simultaneously track your profile/views/clicks? The problem at the moment is that there is no multimedia host that actually just hosts, they all track unique customer habits chasing that recommendation engine big data gravy train.

Also reminder that most copyright infringement is from non-industrialized nations where people indeed cannot afford to 'chip in some money to the service provider'.

The data this company has put behind a paywall is the european weather model, which was developed with tax payer money, is run with tax payer money, and the data of which is almost entirely available for free to anyone that wants to access the data.

Companies like the one that posted this take down notice actually sued (!) the national weather services in a few EU countries to prevent national weather services from publishing weather data to consumers for free, arguing that the weather service should run free APIs, but these companies should be able to build ad and subscription supported apps using these free APIs.

https://www.dwd.de/DE/presse/pressemitteilungen/DE/2020/2020...

All these companies did was build a fence around it and charge a fee. How does that even reach the necessary threshold of originality for copyright?

Because they built the app... They aren't copyrighting the data. They're copyrighting their app.

An app that's a thin wrapper around public data.

Apps like this have sued the public weather services in multiple EU countries to take down the official apps, e.g., https://www.dwd.de/DE/presse/pressemitteilungen/DE/2020/2020...

Fuck private weather apps.

> Apps like this have sued the public weather services in multiple EU countries to take down the official apps, e.g., https://www.dwd.de/DE/presse/pressemitteilungen/DE/2020/2020...

Very important note here. The DWD was found by the highest court in Germany to be acting illegally.

I'm arguing that the law itself is wrong here.

I don't see any value in dozens of different, bad, private apps rehashing the same weather report data.

That the law values the rights of those companies to rent-seek higher than the right of citizens to be informed is extremely dangerous. The same reasoning could be applied to news, laws, or even firefighting.

Some services should just be provided by the state and not by private companies.

How about no. Find another business model or go bankrupt. This rent seeking has to end.

Another business model, as in "just give sh*t away for free, without even advertisements to pay for it"? That's not going to be very successful.

You can't make a business out of everything. By the same reasoning you could argue for banning breathing because it prevents a potential canned-air market.

Because it costs money to provide services? You could not argue that with the same reasoning, because there is no labor involved for air to exist. However services need to be run by people using hardware created by other people, all of whom need to eat, which is only possible with money.

Why? This service could just as well be provided by the national weather service directly.

Why do we need a dozen companies rehashing and reselling the same public dataset?

I dunno. Make a patreon or something. Do it for love. Don't do it at all.

If you send me ads, I'll delete them. If you send me DRM'd data, I'll get rid of it. These are not acceptable business models.

So why not "Don't do it at all" for accessing the content if you do not want to pay for it? You feel entitled to receive it on your terms, but other people are not allowed to only offer something on their terms?

Sure I do, because I can and I make sure to exercise that power and freedom as much as possible. They're the ones who try to control us, using their copyrights and monopolies and lobbying to restrict our freedom and rob us of our rights. I refuse to accept that.

I don't even object to paying. I spend truly ridiculous amounts of money on stuff like this, despite my belief that copyright should be abolished and my knowledge of the fact I'm getting a worse product compared to the pirate, because at the end of the day I do believe in paying money for the things I like. You just need to have the basic decency to name your price. If you try to steal my attention and auction it off to the highest bidder as if it was your property, I will unconditionally block you with extreme prejudice.

Or I can continue to not pay for them to track every single microscopic interaction I ever have with any of their systems :)

I first had internet access in 1998 as a 12 year old without any money. It became a habit to find anything for free: mp3's on metager's "index of" searches, cracks on astalavista.box.sk, movies on IRC bots, 0 day software and games from scene FTPs, later on the whole P2P stuff like gnutella, DC++, torrent etc. and in the mid 00's the move to shared hosters. The fact that I was 12 and didn't get pocket money made me find all my stuff for free and it sticked to this day, except it's either waaaaaaay more convenient to pay a few bucks, or impossible to get otherwise.

So over the years I stopped with my 500GB MP3/AAC/FLAC music collection and moved to Spotify (Which I still hate, because there's always indie stuff that isn't available PLUS stuff they remove, without informing me!). I also stopped pirating movies for some time because of Netflix, but after the democratization of streaming services and the return to walled off exclusives on multiple platforms, I simply went back to torrent streaming. Software is another thing I ALWAYS pirate, the only exception if I use it professionally or make money in any other form by using it.

I am not proud of this, but saving a few bucks seems to be more important to me when I can. This is probably, because it has been ingrained into my brain for years as a child.

I worked in the Digital Marketing business for 10 years (AdTech and MarTech) especially working in Analytics and Data Collection and I never saw ads. Used modified youtube clients for years, uBLock Origin on Desktop AND mobile. Seeing the unfiltered web on friend's devices makes me wonder how they can even brows the web...

Blocking ads on YouTube doesn't affect anyone's bottom line except Google. Creators on YouTube only receive a small percentage of YouTube ad revinue, and most don't count it as stable income because YouTube loves to demonitize videos for no reason and you have almost no recourse once it does.

That's why every video now has embedded ads, which is something entirely different because it's controlled by and paid to the creator directly.

I don't mind giving creators money, and I'm fortunate enough that I can afford to subscribe to several of them every month. Because they deserve my money, not Google.

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